The Story
of the Royal ScotsChapter II - Royal Warrant for Hepburn's Regiment, 1633-1636

Charles the First’s Order—Arguments as to Seniority—Serving
Louis XIII against Germany—Death of Sir John Hepburn in 1636.

The story of Hepburn’s valorous campaigns with the 1633 Green
Brigade in the wars of Gustavus Adolphus forms a great chapter in the record
of the Scots abroad, but so far it has not been the story of a British
regiment. Hepburn and his men, like all the Scots who fought on the great
Swede’s side, were soldiers of fortune. Mercenary is an ugly name, but in
its simple meaning, robbed of unpleasant implications, it expresses their
status. They owed no patriotic allegiance to the “Lion of the North,” and
Hepburn himself was of the same religion as his foes. The spurs to their
gallantry were their love of adventure and the lure of military glory: we do
not hear that they grew very rich in that hard employment. “Irregulars” is a
fairer sounding and truer name, but this was soon to be changed.

On January 26, 1633, Sir John Hepburn received Jan. 26 his
new commission from Louis XIII. Now comes a new and important fact which has
but lately emerged.

After an audience with the French king, Hepburn went to
Scotland to collect recruits, but no longer in the old fashion under his own
name and relying only on his great reputation as a successful leader.

Presumably as the result of negotiations between Charles I
and Louis XIII, the Privy Council of Scotland, by warrant1 dated Edinburgh,
April 24, 1633, and given under the King's Authority at Whitehall on
the 25th of March, gave order to raise twelve hundred men in Scotland. It is
fair, therefore, to regard the regiment as henceforth British, and no less
British because it was for many years to fight in the French service.

Mr. Fortescue has said that “the British standing army dates
not from 1661, but from 1645, not from Monk’s regiment, but from the famous
New Model which was established by Act of the Long Parliament." That is
true, and the Coldstreams are the British foot regiment with the longest
continuous Parliamentary sanction. It is none the less true that the King’s
order of March 1633 establishes The Royal Scots as the regiment with the
longest continuous Royal sanction, and their continuity did not suffer even
the same technical break as the Coldstreams, when on February 14, 1661, the
latter ceased to be Monk’s regiment and straightway became the Lord
General's Foot Guards.

Hepburn’s recruiting in 1633 was swift and beyond the King’s
warrant. On August 8 “two thousand men, good soldiers and mostly
gentlemen" landed at Boulogne,3 and “ Le Sieur Douglas " followed with a
hundred more later in the month. The old Scots companies, which had been
serving in France since Green Brigade Incorporated 1590 and were now
incorporated in the Regiment d’Hebron, had greatly dwindled, but by 1635 the
number was made up to three thousand, mostly new men from Scotland. The new
corps was thus the junior Scots regiment in France. Senior not only to them
but even to every French regiment was the Scottish Guard, a survival from
the Crusades, all gentlemen of the first Scots families, commanded by the
Marquess of Huntly.

The Gendarmes Ecossais was also a distinguished old corps and
the senior troop of the old gendarmerie. There were also in the French
service two regiments of Scots Guards and the regiments of Colonels Leslie
and Ramsay. Hepburn’s new command, junior to them all, was destined to
survive them all as a unit. The colonel himself was promoted to be Marechal
de Camp, a rank junior only to the Marshals of France, and he had not long
to wait before active service began. In 1634 he fought alongside Turenne at
the siege of La Mothe, and it was due to their combined skill that the
fortress fell in July 1634.

After the death of Gustavus, the Protestant cause had fallen
on evil times, and the French, not for love of the Reformed Religion but to
suit their own purposes, went to their help. Richelieu declared war against
the Holy Roman Empire.

Hepburn crossed the Rhine—a happy augury for Royal Scots—and
broke the blockade of Mannheim and Heidelberg in December. Pushing on to
Landau, the Marshal de la Force and Hepburn, now united, joined up with the
Swedes, with whom were the battered remnants of the old Green Brigade. The
joy of Hepburn’s comrade in arms, Colonel Munro, and indeed of all his
war-worn veterans, may well be imagined. As the relieving force approached,
deafening shouts were raised, the Scottish March was played, and the sole
surviving piper, last of the thirty-six who had gone to Gustavus with
Mackay’s Highlanders, skirled a welcome on the great war-pipes of the north.

The reunion was more than temporary, for the veterans were at
once absorbed into the Regiment d'Hebron, which then boasted a grand total
of eight thousand three hundred and sixteen men, the finest regiment in
Europe. It is not true that at this time all the older Scots regiments in
France were incorporated into Hepburn's. According to Pere Daniel, two
regiments of Scots Guards were continuing as independent units in 1643, and
were not absorbed into the Regiment d'H£bron until the Earl of Dumbarton was
in command.

During the campaign against Germany of 1635, when Cardinal de
la Valette was in supreme command of the French forces, there were quarrels
between Hepburn's regiment and the regiment of Picardy. The latter was the
oldest French line regiment, raised in 1562, and was irritated that
Hepburn’s, by reason of having in its ranks some of the Old Scottish Archer
Guard, claimed pride of place in military dispositions. It was then that the
Scots were nicknamed Pontius Pilate’s Guards, a sardonic quip at their claim
to immemorial antiquity which has not lost its freshness.

At the end of this luckless campaign Hepburn's men were, as
usual, in the post of danger, bringing up the rear during a difficult
retreat. One good story of his resource must be told. He had the ill luck to
be taken prisoner by the Imperial forces while directing an encampment. By
pretending to be a German and by giving his captors orders in German with
infinite assurance, they were deceived so perfectly that " they felt it
quite an honour to let him go.” Hepburn’s kindly and helpful treatment of
the broken French troops was as marked as the skill with which his own
regiment extricated itself from countless tight corners. The gallantry of
the Scots, moreover, saved the remnant of the Cardinal’s forces by their
desperate resistance to Gallas’ nine thousand fresh cavalry, whom they broke
in a defile in the mountains of Lorraine. The next year, 1636, brought some
relief to Louis’ harassed forces, which were then supported by the army of
the Duke of Weimar. Hepburn’s skill and valour in this campaign earned for
him the supreme honour of being appointed a Marshal of France. But the sands
were running out. He was the life of the campaign which began in May with
the siege of Saverne, better known to-day as Zabern. Cardinal de la Valette
and Hepburn attacked on one side, Bernard of Saxe-Weimar on the other. Above
the town, which was set amongst chestnut woods, stood a strong castle,
crowning the summit of a steep and lofty rock. There was no approach to it,
save by a rock-hewn pathway, narrow and swept by the guns on the frowning
ramparts above. On June 9 a breach was made in the walls of the town and a
general assault was ordered. Hepburn, Turenne and Jean d’Hunau were in the
forefront of the fight. The last of these was left dead with hundreds of his
men when night fell and the French forces fell back exhausted and
unsuccessful. Two weeks went by, and further assaults alike failed. On July
21 the artillery attack was redoubled to prepare for a final effort. Hepburn
decided to examine the principal breach. With his usual cool courage he
advanced too near. The batteries of town and castle were firing into the
French lines with greater fury than ever. A ball from the ramparts struck
him; he fell and was carried away by his faithful Scots.

Stung with grief and anger, Turenne led a fourth assault by
the same breach which had led Hepburn to his death. It was the last. The
walls were stormed. Saverne was won, but Hepburn did not live to hear the
news. As the sun set behind the mountains of Alsace on that brilliant July
evening, this gallant Scottish gentleman breathed his last amongst the
comrades whom he had led so brilliantly and loved so well. By a trick of
Fate, his Marshal’s baton did not reach the camp from the King until Hepburn
had fallen.1 But they laid it on his coffin when they bore him to his grave
in the south transept of the cathedral of Toul.

Two Hepburns, his kinsmen, were aided by the greatest
soldiers of France in the last offices, and the Bishop sang solemn mass
amidst universal grief; but the last words of the first colonel of The Royal
Scots had been of sorrow that he could not lie by his old home in the shadow
of the green hills of Dirleton.

The great Cardinal Richelieu mourned for his blunt-spoken
friend, and thought Saverne dearly purchased by his death. It had been a
great career for a man not more than thirty-six when he died. Years went by,
and Louis XIV set up a noble monument in the cathedral to his gallant
memory. It did not survive the havoc of the Revolution, but his grave slab
can still be deciphered, and not long since the regiment placed above it a
wreath of bronze.

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